Timberwolf (Firefox) Beta For AmigaOS

An anonymous reader writes "News from the world of AmigaOS that the Beta version of Timberwolf (a.k.a. Firefox) was made available last month." Timberwolf is a port of Firefox to the AmigaOS (the name change is for similar reasons to Debian's use of Iceweasel name) and has been under development for quite some time. The AmigaBounty project page has screenshots and even more info for those interested. There's a video of the browser in action, but beware of the cheesy soundtrack.

Comments

T-t-t-t-t-t-tiiiiim-beeeerrrrr

[Niedi]

Great, now I'll have that Timberwolf tune stuck in my head for the next couple of days.
For all who don't know what I'm talking about:
http://frededison.free.fr/
or Thomas Timberwolf on youtube...

Does the Amiga OS

[geekoid]

have any inherent advantage over other modern OS?

I get people like to do this stuff for fun and nostalgia. That's fine. It's just been so long since I have used an Amiga I can't think of anything today that it does better then Win7/OSX/Linux

Re:Does the Amiga OS

[realmolo]

No, no advantage.

It's still a very *efficient* OS, but it lacks about a zillion features that any modern OS has. Protected memory, for one.

But for day-to-day use? It's pointless and stupid. You can't do anything with AmigaOS that you can't do faster and better (anc cheaper- modern Amiga hardware is ridiculously expensive) on Linux, MacOS, or Windows.

Still, AmigaOS has a lot of neat features. It's still very well-designed, and it's interesting to think about what it would be like if it had sold well enough to become a viable alternative.

Re:Does the Amiga OS

[Johann Lau]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6nRHNDY2Kw

Re:Does the Amiga OS

[Sloppy]

Speed. AmigaOS is bloody fucking fast and ought to be able to run rings around most OSes.

That's assuming you have equivalent hardware to your Linux system, which happens to never be the case.

And it's assuming you don't care that any of hundred tasks can write to any particular piece of memory, an assumption which usually isn't the case, though somehow in the 1990s I managed to get by with that, telling myself "run bugfree software, run bugfree software." Whether or not there's actually such a thing as bugfree software, or if Firefox could possibly be an example of it, I'll leave to Firefox hackers to advocate. (Good luck, guys, you're going to need it.)

And it's assuming that by "fast" you're not talking about the filesystems. The Amiga had some third-party filesystems that were pretty speedy for the time but somewhere around 2.4 Linux got into a league of its own.

Re:Does the Amiga OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked you couldn't get a PC virus to run on an Amiga.

Re:Does the Amiga OS

[toejam13]

it's interesting to think about what it would be like if it had sold well enough to become a viable alternative.

There is a good chance that it would look nothing like the OS we used on legacy Amiga hardware.

The reason the OS was so bloody fast was because it used a flat non-protected memory space. IPC was often done by passing pointers via registers. You could eavesdrop into any other task's memory space, even if its memory was not flagged with MEMF_PUBLIC. The majority of the kernel ran outside of 68K supervisor mode with function calls being made via a jump table as opposed to a software interrupt.

One of the largest complaints about desktop multitasking operating systems of the 80s and 90s was that they crashed too much. That was a huge complaint with Windows 95 and was also a common complaint with AmigaOS. To continue being a viable OS, AmigaOS would have needed memory protection bolted on at some point.

Using a fully virtualized protected memory model like UNIX and NT would have been incompatible with the foundation of AmigaOS since it would break IPC. You'd need stick with a flat address space, simply marking some memory sections as R/O. Program code sections could be R/O for everything except the kernel (that'd prohibit self-modifying code, but SMC was already incompatible with the data cache in 68020+ processors). Tasks could then allocate private memory, public memory or even semi-private memory by granting limited R/O or R/W access to other tasks.

Main problem I see with that route is that you'd bump into the 4GB barrier much faster than fully virtualized memory models, especially since a large chunk of that 4GB would also be allocated to memory mapped hardware and other PCI peripherals. You'd need a processor with a 48-bit or 64-bit memory address space sooner than later.

Re:Does the Amiga OS

[damnbunni]

I find it more fun to just screw around with than the other computers I've got. I wouldn't suggest anyone else get one unless they're just 'into computers' and like messing around with stuff.

The one thing it does that I really, really wish Windows or OSX would do is its focus paradigm. Click to focus, but click does not raise window. It gives you the advantages of both click to focus - the focus stays where you want it even if you bump the mouse - and the advantage of focus follows mouse, that you can have a background window be the active one. Double-clicking a window raises it to the top.

I'd certainly pay a few bucks for a program to add that to my PC or Mac.

I do use my Amiga quite a bit - it's a 2009 model, with 800 MHz PowerPC and a gig of RAM - because the browser is good enough, my IM and email clients work fine, and it has most of the software I want to use. But I also have other computers, because some stuff the Amiga just won't do, or it's a pain in the butt to do with it.

My 'New Amiga' wasn't cheap, but it was in line with other pricey hobbies. A bit more than a launch-day Playstation 3, all told, got me a machine with no moving parts other than the DVD drive. So at least it has 'completely silent' as an advantage.

Re:Does the Amiga OS

[unixisc]

Since 64-bit CPUs are now common (except ARM), I'd think they could leapfrog 32-bit, and go directly from 16-bit to 64 bit and be there on PPC or MIPS. Do something like using the top (or bottom) half of the address space as reserved for the R/O, and leave the other half there for the memory to grow. That would still give the user up to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 bytes to address. In fact, they could even toss in some compatibility features w/ the old 16-bit Amiga DOS.

But I only see the point if some computer manufacturer bundles it w/ a new computer that can't run Windows, such as a MIPS or PPC based computer. No point in having this to port it to PCs - there are already too many alternatives for PCs, and as others have noted above, there is no reason to prefer it to Windows7/OS-X or any of the Unixes.

Re:Does the Amiga OS

[LordLimecat]

Last time I checked, you cant get a PC virus to run on a potato either.

Re:Does the Amiga OS

[Bert64]

Safer purely due to security through obscurity... AmigaOS has virtually no security features, it doesn't even have a concept of users or of protected address space so a vulnerability in any userland application is effectively a kernel level exploit.

Wait ...

[lennier1]

Do newer Amiga systems even have enough memory to handle the memory leaks in Firefox' add-on system?

Re:Wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how many articles come out that show Firefox's memory management to be competitive there's always going to be clueless trolls like you that are stuck in an infinite loop. Trolls to say something stupid and trolls to mod it Insightful.

Why don't you tell Adam he doesn't know WTF he's doing: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-17-firefox-10-ubuntu,3129-14.html

Timberwolf?

[AarghVark]

I do hope its the D variant with all the SRM's on it.

Re:Timberwolf?

[lennier1]

Does the output bounce around like the display that earned the MadCat its name?

Re:Timberwolf?

[lennier1]

According to the story, the first time they encountered one, the recognition system couldn't decide between MAD (Marauder) and CAT (Catapult). Reports of this event later lead to the new name.

source code license

[Anonymous Coward]

"The source code of the port will be made available only as far as the MPL requires it, i.e. all modified source code files will be available for interested parties, but new files will not. This is in accordance with the requirements of the Mozilla Public License. "

that's the true amiga spirit when it comes to source releases. Release as little as possible. Got to make sure no-one else running any machines "similar" to the AmigaOS could possibly benefit from their work.

Re:source code license

[AC-x]

I hope you also read through the entire source code. And compiled the compiler you used. And hand assembled the compiler you compiled the compiler with :)

Re:So?

[philip.paradis]

I care. Other /. members apparently care. Since you don't care, why did you waste your time posting a comment?

Quit putting the first half-sentence in the title

[Dogtanian]

Does the Amiga OS have any inherent advantage over other modern OS?

This tends- justifiably- to be asked every time there's been a bit of Amiga "news" in the past few years (including that of the final release of Amiga OS 4, delayed for around 15 years).

If there *is* any major advantage, then no-one came up with one during any of those discussions.

Really, the Amiga OS nowadays is just a plaything for a few very hardcore hobbyists willing to pay for overpriced, underpowered custom hardware that isn't even directly compatible with the original Amiga anyway. Amiga OS (and the original hardware) was fantastic in its day, and beat the living heck out of MS-DOS and early Windows, but that was a long time ago. Anyone for whom Amiga OS/hardware compatibility was essential or even useful would have been forced to give up and migrate elsewhere by the late-90s at most. For that reason, even if one *could* upgrade it to a modern OS, it'd make more sense just to write a new OS from scratch- the "classic" core would just end up being legacy baggage that would please the Amiga obsessives because they could call it Amiga OS, but have little real world use beyond muddying the design.

(Sorry, didn't want that to sound like a dismissal of the genuinely innovative Amiga OS, but things have moved on too far now).

The Amiga IP seems to be a bit confusing, having been sold on several times, split and licensed (and the rights disputed), as well as the names having been used on things having apparently nothing to do with the Amiga (some mobile phone OS layer called "Amiga Anywhere" and even worse slapped onto some generic HTPC cases that reused the numbers of classic Amigas). F****** horrid, just let it go.

leave us be

[amigabill]

AmigaOS today is for people that are obsessed with it. Either you are, and enjoy it, or you are not, and don't care. It can be a useful platform, though yes it does have some limitations today. I don't know why people post Amiga stuff to the non-caring Slashdot etc. sites. Move along and let us enjoy our hobby, we obsessors don't need your counseling and it won't bring us to our senses anyway.

Re:leave us be

[styrotech]

No way! I haven't used an Amiga for 15-20 yrs and probably never will again, but I still have a soft spot for it and like to occasionally hear about what's happening with its latest incarnations.

After all it is very nerdy news, and that's what we're here for right?

Re:Aren't they all betas?

[unixisc]

So does that mean Amiga users will be getting latest & greatest updates every 8 weeks? Is Timberwolf on v11 already?

What about AROS?

[csirac]

AROS is AmigaOS 3.1+, with extra bits, re-implemented as a portable OS (not just x86, but ARM, 68k, PPC). AROS is/was for users, by users, without (scant!) profits getting in the way of rational decision-making.

The reason the various zombie shells of Amiga, Inc. and its contractors/IP licensees never did an x86 port is because by the time the AROS guys were actually doing it, the Amiga market was so small that monetizing such an effort would have been impossible without proprietary hardware in the first place.

I'm glossing over the fact that PPC was technically also a much easier challenge than going x86, but I think that's the reality: there always seemed to be more money in what was left of the retail/reseller network for hardware, than software.

I'd also like to point out that AmigaOS had virtual memory, even in the classic 3.x OS with add-ons, and many popular software packages were written to be "VM friendly". Also, AmigaOS 4.x has protected memory, but the implementation has some interesting twist which I forget the details of (but seemed a good compromise to transition AmigaOS 3.x apps into the new protected-memory world).

Even with protected memory enabled, it sure as hell boots faster and starts apps quicker than the shiny new Asus laptop I bought last year...

Re:What about AROS?

[Bert64]

Yes, the blatant attempts at profiteering were the final nail in the coffin for the Amiga...
Back when i had a (relatively highend) Amiga, in order to connect it to the internet i would have needed to buy a tcp stack, and then buy a browser, even things like ftp, irc and telnet clients had a price tag attached! Even MS and Apple don't charge extra for basic things like that.

And AmigaOS 4, not only expensive in its own right (even free niche os's have trouble gaining traction, what hope does an expensive one have?), but it's also tied to proprietary hardware that is insanely overpriced, under specced and not widely available.

Put it this way, lots of people are willing to try AROS, its a free download and will run happily on hardware that the vast majority of people already have at their disposal. It will run happily on old hardware which you may have laying around, can boot as a livecd so as not to affect your existing installation and can run inside of common virtualization software. You've nothing to lose, and anyone can try it.
Contrast that with AmigaOS 4, you have to pay several hundred EUR (last i checked) for the hardware, plus an additional 100+ for the copy of AmigaOS, and then if you don't like the OS or find that it doesn't suit your needs all you have to show for it is a very slow linux box.